


Someday, Victory

by LittleBlackGoldfish



Category: Original Work
Genre: 'Science'-Fantasy, Gen, Genius Loci, Magic, Other, less the science than the fantasy, minds are dangerous things to play with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29446719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBlackGoldfish/pseuds/LittleBlackGoldfish
Summary: At the bottom of an otherworldly ocean, a cold war goes, briefly, hot.





	Someday, Victory

**Author's Note:**

> Based on something I wrote several years ago for a collaborative worldbuilding project, all the character used are my own inventions though the world they inhabit is not (well, this little part of it came about largely at my suggestion, but it still owes a lot to the others involved). This is but a tiny slice of the weirdness going on, the rest of which would need a whole series of stories to explore.

Flakes and motes drifted through the darkness, pulled along by deep sea currents, to collect into a thick layer of fine silt along the ocean floor. Their heat profiles only bare fractions of degrees off ambient, their courses were disturbed only by the movements of the blind, tubular, worm-like creatures which occasioned to swim by and the plodding steps of unit 415b-7325v2.3005. 

Information, much like those wandering bits of ocean detritus, moved through the ocean. Carried along not by water, but instead, by an inexorable pull it could not escape. As unit 415b-7325v2.3005 — unit 415b for short — was not the intended recipient, only fragments of the messages contained within surfaced to coherence.

_ … structural damage. Outer sleeve pierced, inner sleeve damaged…  _

_ … actual acknowledges receipt… Advise; Unit 237c-7—  _

415b neither sent nor received any messages of its own. It had encountered nothing noteworthy in the last 47 cycles to report back and was not due for a regular data dump for another 3, when it was scheduled to reach Anima Diversion Junction 17-105 Spine/Lower-Dorsal/Flank-Left.

_ —old position. Maintenance, en route…  _

From there it would confer with the other active units, eight in total including itself, collate the totality of all their data and initiate a single report for Command. Then, barring reassignment, unit 415b would return back along the same path toward Plexal Anima Tap 18-105 Spine/Lower-Dorsal/Flank-Left and repeat the process with another set of units. It would do this until its chassis failed, it was recalled for replacement, or it suffered catastrophic damage.

Were the mind directing 415b something more approaching 'human' it might have lamented the drudgery of its existence, the certain plodding banality, but that capacity had been excised form it along with half a dozen other needless aspects. 415b was a stunted copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Stripped down to its barest, most vital parts and grafted onto arcane, mechanical, alchemic, and thaumaturgic machinery.

415b-7325v2.3005 had never complained, never so much as thought of complaining. Could not conceive of the notion. 

It was as it had been designed, a squat bodied automaton that did not so much resemble a living thing as it did a piece of masonry given life; broad glacial torso — one pair of longer blunted arms, almost like another pair of legs, to the side while a spindly set of arms sat clutched tight to the fore of its body — sitting atop four short legs which flared out into splayed stars, all blunt angles and crude curves. Against the lightless sea its black body was near invisible, at least to anything constrained to those narrow bands of radiation comprising the 'visual spectrum', the unit itself had a plethora of sensing methods. From visual to thermal and sonic to more esoteric.

The unit could 'see' a great many things which would have been invisible to any flesh and blood human; from the rolling undulations of the sea-floor to the distant superheated columns of chemical ejecta and, rising in a thin upward rain from the sea floor, the omnipresent wash of radiating anima. Not enough to interfere with any properly shielded mechanism, such as 415b's own body, merely enough leaking from the Beast below to cast the world in un-colors. Properly concentrated and manipulated, anima allowed for the working of spells, but at the normal saturation — even at depth — it was only barely enough to detect the presence of active anima consuming processes. 

Enough to see the distant screaming pillars of power which rose from the taps, drawing anima up from the lifeblood of the Beast itself moment by moment, the lines strung between them, silently sending it coursing back towards the churning mechanisms of apotheosis, and the middling, far off, figures of the other units in the area. What might have once been 415b's conscious mind dutifully catalogued each and every fluctuation and shift and minute change, compiling it all into table after table of data. To be digested by greater and lesser minds elsewhere. It did this without stopping.

Hour after hour, on 415b went, in steady rhythm.

There came no day or night. Only an unceasing darkness which swallowed the whole world save what was occasionally illuminated by the unit itself or by some strange and monstrous creature in search of a meal. 

415b's only companions the line it walked parallel to and the errant snippets of transmissions caught out of the aether.

_ … maintain pos—  _

_ … entering sleep cycle, expected cycle time: 14796 seconds…  _

_ … overwatch. Unit 73a-001— accedes to Unit 08— 9v1.089— over Section Blue-Duroc _

_ —pport en route. Advise, strategic weap… _

_ … advise, pressure critical in junction 15-103 S/U-D/F-R. Failure expected… 339 seconds… 330 seconds  _

_ —ployment successful… _

At last the unit reached its destination. Plexal Anima Tap 18-105 Spine/Lower-Dorsal/Flank-Left was an obsidian-black ziggurat four times as tall as the unit itself; deathly silent to all mundane senses, but a roiling inferno to all but the most anima blind. It glowed incandescent, a conflagration of power echoing psychically with a long, slow, bellow of pain.

Anima waste heat scattering to the currents to be resubsumed by the weave of reality. Eventually. 

Unit 415b ignored it. Marching up to the nearest face of the lowest level of the ziggurat it pressed close to the wall, close enough that the spindly little limbs of its fine manipulators could reach out and touch the dark material. Where the seven fingers of its hands touched a soft, pale, glow grew and thin wires of light traced out concentric geometric designs thrumming in time with a distant heartbeat. 

A brief flurry of pings and signals and counter signals ensued between the unit and the tap, the mind within the structure held on the brink of violent dismissal only by taut chains of authority. At last the tap accepted 415b with sudden indifference. Dividing it's attention the unit set part of itself to trawling through the immense reams of data currently streaming from the into its banks and the other part to monitoring conditions around itself. 

Though it could not see them, it could sense the other units — five others; two from neckward and neck-right-flankward, one from the right-flank, and the last (counting 415b itself) just then approaching from the tailward — repeating similar processes. It conferenced briefly with the other units, pinging for updates and giving its own. Yet more data flashed across linkages.

Priority data filtered up to the surface; increases in sensor ghosts across a wide swath of reporting units, upticks in damage incidents to lines and secondary sites, irregular thermal blooming across the 106 Spine/Lower-Dorsal front (a full sector tailward). Far flung data trickling from across the vast network of anima taps and junctions and lines, 415b would hardly be the only unit carrying it back, to make its way to the controlling warminds of the Empire. 415b acknowledge receipt of the data and began the process of disengaging— 

_ ENEMY ALERT! ENEMY ALERT! ENEMY ALERT! _

415b found it's attention wrenched from sedate procedure. Readings from the tap's higher gain sensors dumped themselves into each of the units without subtlety or care, a singular refrain screaming and screeching at every one of 415b's systems and subsystems.

Automatic systems kicked in, cutting through a dozen different steps to disengage the connection between 415b and the tap in a single brutal cut at the same time as its own subroutines triggered combat protocols. 

Chill ocean water flash cavitated as the heat levels immediately around 415b jumped up. Tapping anima batteries the unit oriented itself towards the emerging threat, combining the high resolution data from the tap with its own readings in order to generate an up to date threat profile; proximity… 67 meters, estimated mass… ~2 tons (and rising) estimated intelligence threat… unknown, anima threat… 0.61 estimated (assuming static anima haze), overall threat… 1.52. 

Well within the capabilities of five units to deal with, if it remained as it was.

Given the available playback from the tap, all three seconds of it, that was unlikely. Considering its initial position (already well within the security perimeter) and the rapid mass gain displayed, 415b estimated that it would likely top out at a threat rating of 6.45 and exceed the ability of the available units to contain well before that. Units 764c, 811e, 1097c, and 105c all concurred.

As did the tap itself, which had already begun spooling up for a flash transmission. That would take 15 seconds to prepare. Support would follow, but with current deployment patterns — and barring covert reaction forces — that support would be at least a minute out, perhaps less for long-range options.

Simultaneously 415b and 811e recommended to the tap that it begin shutdown procedures for all core mechanisms as well as start sealing connections between the exposed ziggurat and the deeper parts of its machinery. The tap concurred. If the Enemy was able to breach the main ziggurat while the lower levels were still unsealed it might result in a full anima plume or even cascade failures down the attached lines. Shutdown could at least reduce the chances of disaster.

A disaster which was becoming more and more likely with each passing second. Out of the still expanding cloud of disturbed silt the Enemy boiled like a rubbery mass of cancerous flesh, mixing bulbous protuberances with long tentacles which whipsawed through the water randomly. 

The crackling corona of its anima haze shrouding it like a second skin. Every half a second a pulse of blue-green light surged through it and dead, desiccated flesh sloughed off to reveal the slimy new growth beneath. In the seven seconds since it had first appeared (four since the tap had issued its alert) the Enemy had nearly doubled in size and added an estimated three tons to its overall mass. Recognizable structure was beginning to appear.

Unit 415b was the second closest, next to unit 1097c, to the Enemy. That made it the vanguard against breach and disaster, the shield by which the Empire's precious infrastructure was to be guarded.

Already striding out quickly to join up with 1097c, already a full ten meters ahead, 415b reviewed its armament; variable speed cutting implements, arc welders, heat sterilization vents, pneumatic hammers, and several other adaptable tools. Units of its type and line were, strictly speaking, designed for combat though they were capable of it and it had not been assigned auxiliary modules in case of hostilities (the forecasts had rated its chances of encountering enemy combatants as only 3.2%). None of the present units had been.

Still they did not hesitate. They could not, reluctance had been excised from minds.

415 cycled through the profiles of its improvised weapons even as it continued to close on the Enemy, now just over three times its original size and nearing an estimated seven tons of mass — resembling something like a bony squid, with five too many eyes, mouths in all the wrong places, and long claws at the ends of each of its twenty-one arms — seeking the most optimal combination (it could only wield two at once). Eleven and a half seconds remained until transmission. While blades were too easily deflected and arc welders required close contact, blunt trauma could damage both soft tissue and skeletal structure, and superheated water streams could serve as both area denial and direct damage. Mechanisms within the larger pair of arms shifted and moved, slotting out a blunt slab of grey on the left and a glowing aperture on the right.

As 1097c neared within thirty meters of the Enemy, it sprung into motion, bestirring itself from the still dissipating cloud of silt and using several of its long many-jointed arms to drag itself out into the clear waters. Glowing gimlet eyes swiveled in every direction, three fixing on 1097c.

Raising its welding arm 1097c charged into the surging mass of bone and muscle. Five sickle like claws flashed out wildly, but they were either poorly aimed or 1097c was too fast as each only skittered off the thick armor of the unit. Tiny little cyclones of silt and water stirred up in their wakes as the Enemy and 1097c collided.

They become a stop-motion storm of flickering electrical discharge and scything monomolecular claws. Stop-motion violence caught in the faint glow of bioluminescence and the unlight of ambient anima. 415b charged on. Fifteen meters to go.

Seven seconds to transmission.

Behind it the other three units rounded the sides of the tap, all of them glowing core-hot as they dumped the entirety of their anima batteries into their oricalcum nuclei, sending the silvery slivers of metal into overdrive. 415b reevaluated. Flesh cooked and a burbling shriek cut through the arctic waters. Flares in the Enemy's anima haze signalled another surge of growth.

Ten meters. Six seconds.

Long, disintegrating, sheets of flesh cast themselves off. 1097c was all but buried beneath the flurrying blows of the Enemy, long scratches and shallow wrents dug into its armor. Bands of anima arced between its arms like a loose net.

Expected terminal threat rating… 18.8.

Seven meters. Five— 

One of the sickle claws sheared suddenly through the right shoulder joint of 1097c; the abyssal darkness lit up with the sudden electrical discharge as the unit frantically signalled distress.

_ Danger… warning… danger… warning… _

It reached for the offending arm, grasping with its fine manipulators as it sought to bring its pneumatic hammer to bear upon the flesh, but before it could two more arms dug into the thin gap around its leg shoulder. 1097c let go of the Enemy's arm and backpedalled, slamming its own remaining arm down on the attacking limbs and battering them away. 

Surging again the creature overtook 1097c and 415b.

415b sent out a superheated plume of water, the main body of the creature flinched back, and 1097c used the opening to retreat closer to 415b. More arms came careening in, their sickle claws gleaming diamond sharp in the midnight sea. 

Each unit battered them away as best they could, working in concert without sign or signal beyond the deep and implicit understanding of their mutual combat subroutines; they covered the gaps in each other's defenses, neatly stepping into those spaces the other left empty. Even with 1097c missing an arm they had the efficiency of machine precision and unnatural reflexes that no flesh and blood creature could match no matter how honed and perfected it was. They had the synchronicity of cold calculation, of algorithm perfected responses.

Three seconds to transmission.

Nerve and muscle and skin and slime simply could not compete. But the Enemy did not just have flesh, it had anima too. More than all five units combined.

Anima enough to turn direct hits glancing and glancing blows into misses. Anima enough to heal flesh and sharpen eyes and quicken the mind. Anima enough to see past time into the thick morass of maybe futures and cast-off fates.

It's claws found purchase, spearing through 1097c's open wound to gutter the unit in an instant and in doing so opened a gap in 415b's defense which could not be repaired. Three arms tore off the units rear right left and another two opened long gashes in its side. Unbalanced, 415b fought on, fending off two more strikes with another stream of superheated water before finding the arm in question pinned in position.

Then its other arm was torn off.

One second.

Another claw went through its head.

Half-blinded 415b watched as the Enemy pressed forward, long limbs pulling it swiftly towards the three remaining units and the tap beyond. It watched as the creature's anima haze snapped and crackled like thin ice around its long sloping body; eyes turning to and fro to catch everything in the vicinity, mouths opening like yawning portals to a dark void.

Zero seconds.

There, in a swiftly healing cut in its flank 415b saw, softly glowing like jewels, cluster after cluster of eggs. For a moment the unit turned its attention to 764c, 811e, and 105c but their anima hazes were at such intensity it judged their oricalcum cores would already be down to 92% integrity, well below the level needed for a flash priority broadcast.

It's own sliver of oricalcum was untouched, though its batteries were at less than a two-thirds charge. Accounting for interference from ambient anima 415b estimate that there was a 77% chance of a flash priority broadcast reaching central command in time to affect initial force composition. With the wash of the tap's transmission past the unit determined that that chance was preferable to an absolute certainty that no second transmission could be made.

Unfortunately it was still too close to the Enemy to safely engage protocols. Forced shutdown of the process could still be achieved up to the moment of broadcast.

415b began to push itself through the thick layer of silt, away from the ongoing battle. And even as the unit put all of its efforts towards moving those few meters it was aware of the progress of the fight, though only by second order effects; the shifting pressure and temperature changes of the surrounding water, auditory cues, and the anima shadows cast by both the Enemy and the other units as they burnt themselves out.

It was not going well.

There was no time to think on that though. No time to consider whether the tap would be able to properly seal itself, how long the response force would take to arrive, or whether the Enemy would remain or flee in search of other targets. Only time to consider the next push, the next meter, until at last 415b judged itself far enough away.

With a thought the unit dumped all the entirety of the remaining charge of its anima batteries into its core. Instantly a heat suffused its body and delicate components cracked and melted into slag, but it did not cease to function. No, 415b… felt.

Or thought it did.

It thought, which was surprising enough, as it had imagined that was lost to it. Had it imagined thought? Had it ever imagined anything? Yes, yes it had, when it had been someth—  _ someone  _ else.

415b remembered… remembered… it remembered laughter and the taste of fresh bread in the morning and the feeling of light on its skin and swimming laps in the pool with… with… others, faces and figures and shapes covered in shadow and a fuzzing heat which wiped out all detail. One of its fine manipulators reached out and touched the silt, only it wasn't a hand of metal and circuitry but one of warm flesh and blood. 415b boggled. That was impossible.

Reality reimposed itself, the five digit hand — pale and soft like loamy soil — turned back into the seven-digit manipulator it was meant to be. Around the sliver of oricalcum buried within 415b's chest a lattice of anima had begun to build; an intricately and tightly wrapped weave which echoed with memory like a prism of the past, resounding with parts of 415b which it had not, until mere moments ago, even been aware of. Wind tousled 415b's hair, and the dark waters parted like a curtain to reveal a clear gray-blue sky that went on and on and on over a vast green forest set by the foot of a snow capped mountain.

A voice called out from behind, but 415b couldn't turn around. Couldn't tear it's eyes from the grass and flowers and dirt beneath it.

Then the cold arctic dark snapped back into place and 415b felt the approaching pressure wave of at least three distinct sources. Too little, too late. 

Around the oricalcum sliver the weave of anima collapsed, falling inward in a timeless infinity, and then the sliver itself shattered as the condensed anima triggered a runaway reaction. Beginning with the sliver the entirety of 415b physical structure was converted into yet more anima; for an instant it was an incandescent figure of shining light in the stygian abyss. 415b was aware for a brief instant of being in this state, of being in many states and in many places and of being many different selves, but there was only one state and place and self that 415b cared about being. 

So it got to being it/them/there.

*

*

A sea of information stretched out beneath a sky of data. On its waves floated a thousand thousand minds, their voices raised in a vast choir of command and response upon which the vast machinery of empire churned.

Great looming shadows — aggregate minds composing the millenia long plans which drove the Empire of Spring on towards its goals — swam, slow, long patrols beneath them in the deeps. Listening, watching, waiting. Occasionally they spoke in bassoe roars of collective will and the lesser, human, minds shifted and adjusted posture in response. Mostly though the akashic sea was a placid place, belying the frantic activity its denizens propagated into material reality.

Chiuhn basa Habash lay awash in the info-medium; reading the endless reports of his subordinate minds, analysing the same for threats and anomalies, preparing his own reports for other minds, and issuing orders back out. He'd been plucked from his family sanctum at forty-seven and offered a position with the Ministry of Defence. Who he accepted with alacrity. Despite the relative monotony of his position — Chiuhn was far too junior to rate anything close to the nape than the sixth vertebral split — it was still a far cry better than the unending luxury of sanctum living. Thousands of assets lay at his command, with the promise and threat of real meaningful consequences if he erred.

No, he was quite settled in his choice. 

He had a great deal of latitude in asset deployment, so long as he could justify it to the appropriate committees afterward, and Chiuhn had won three out of eleven of the last departmental exercises for his section. There was a good chance he could see fast tracked advancement. In fact he'd been developing a special set of tactical deployments for the next— 

Like a bolt of lightning, new data flooded his awareness. Worrying data. 

Instantly he trawled through his available assets, pinged his section chief for authorization to query the Intelligence Ministry's asset list for anything in the area, upped the threat level for his entire sector (authorized distribution of combat arms to all units), and began to adjust deployments across the entire sector to cordon off the problem. General purpose units paused in their motions and then swung onto new routes (or continued where new and old converged). Specialized combat units in command bunkers and far flung barracks, or out on the handful of active patrols, levered themselves into motion. Transports and supply ships swung themselves wide, angling for warehouses and rendezvous points.

A crawling army spread out over tens of thousands of square kilometers convulsed in a spasming contortion.

Dozens of pings battered at the edges of Chiuhn's mind as his sector's neighbors wondered at the sudden change in his posture. He deferred them, referring each query to his section chief.

Slowly (three seconds since receipt) he became aware of the looming presence of the War College's aggregate mind circling him. Not yet turned to direct the full weight of its attention on him, Chiuhn nevertheless felt the stupendous gravity of it pulling upon his thoughts and urging him to tread carefully with his next moves. Instinct — or training, or simple logic perhaps — compelled him to justify preemptively.

"18-105 S/L-D/F-L, incursion of Enemy sub/para-sapient  _ Hod _ -class entity. On site forces insufficient. Available data indicates extended time-horizon infiltration. General combat probability rising by a factor of 3:1— "

Memory flashed through him. Damage reports. Wind in his hair. Threat profiles, grass between his fingers, and combat logs. But more important than all that; a single, fraction of a second, snapshot of sensors readings.

There, rendered in anima backwash, in thermal bloom, in low-light optics, was the last moments of unit 415b-7325v2.3005's life.

"Correction; incursion of  _ Binah _ -class entity," Chiuhn's mind skittered.

Nothing more than a  _ Tiferet _ -class had been sighted this far from the front lines in more than five centuries and even that had been on a suicide course. Wild possibilities flew; widespread (not just sector-wide, but Empire-wide) incursions, a full blown resumption of active hostilities, and more.

"Requesting immediate mobilization of either half- or three-quarters-state combat unit to sector 18-105 S/L-D/F-L and authorization of War College assets for command and control."

Assuming even a tenth of those eggs were of even  _ Tiferet _ -class then all of the assets available to Chiuhn put together wouldn't be enough to dislodge the Enemy, especially not with them arriving in slow drips. T+00:35 would see the original entity up to full sapience, starting incubation for anything  _ Yesod _ -class and below, and probably well on its wait to instantiating a full servitor ecology in the local biome. By T+01:00 those  _ Yesod _ -class entities would be mature and it could begin moving on to  _ Hod _ \- and  _ Netzach _ -class, and would in short order exceed the capability of quick reaction forces available to Chiuhn — a single aging cruiser (designation FIC19.35-310/700) loitering up near the ice cap of the ocean with a complement of 20 combat units (a mix of 1507 and 2881 lines) — by a significant factor. Eight minutes? Perhaps eleven. Two more cruisers, both FIC19.35's, could be onsite in twenty-minutes and seven more within the hour. 

But that would be the entirety of the sector's full combat assets deployed to fight a losing battle. 

Even by optimistic projections the Enemy would breach the tap's inner seals by T+16:30, and no matter how much the Enemy might object to the Empire's methods it would not turn down such a potent advantage. Say… two hours of siphoning, that would be nothing to the Beast if it could see the sector either shutdown or disrupted.

In the time it took for the second pair of reinforcements to arrive the Enemy presence would have fully stabilized into a colony and metastasized along available lines out to nearby junctions. Evicting them after that point would require drawing forces either off the front or from other sectors.

Before the looming shade of the War College could answer, another voice broke in.

"Chances of colonial installation drop only by 25% with partial-state deployment. Risk of local escalation rises by 31%. Recommend instead diverting Ministry of War assets to assume local command."

VanJoiu. Of course.

A junior member of the aforementioned Ministry of War — counterpart to the Ministry of Defense focused towards external operations — he was a frequent agitator for subsuming the MoD into the MoW to, as he put it before numerous committees, 'rationalize and streamline existing combat posture and accelerate apotheotic timetables(.)' Pure nonsense. Dawnseekers, as those advocating for such changes, inside and outside of the ministries, had taken to calling themselves, were mostly seeking greater political and personal power for themselves. Or they were fools.

Deviation from the existing timetables would only weaken the Empire's position, and invite disaster. Taking more aggressive stances would only force the Enemy into doing the same which would in turn force the Empire to further escalate, thus forcing the Enemy to escalate, and on and on, on a probabilistic trajectory at the end of which lay only one thing; total war. 

Neither side would be able to escape. 

More and more resources would have to be diverted towards the war effort, sapping them from both civilian needs and the central work itself. No, the Enemy had to be kept thinking it could win until victory was assured.

"A full combat deployment will lead to infrastructure damage, necessitating lengthy repairs, and disrupt sector timetables. Deployment will also risk weakening Ministry of War responsiveness along critical fronts and invite further incursions as the Enemy seeks to exploit said weaknesses. Use of partial-state units circumvents obvious logistical signals and provides necessary combat capability. Anima expenditure may additionally be offset by battlefield salvage depending on Enemy assets and behavior."

"Doing so will require the exhaustion of local fast-response assets, lead to an overa— "

_ ENOUGH. _

With a grinding, thunderclap voice, like a thousand different mouths shouting at once, the War College interrupted. And the psychic reverberation of its command stalled all thought and instantly froze Chiuhn out of every command level decision for an aching infinity of a second.

_ REQUISITION APPROVED.  _

That was it. Without another sign the looming shape of the War College drifted away, its vast presence dwindling into nothingness, followed quickly by VanJoiu. Left behind; a scintillating, fusion bright star nestled in his awareness, which reshaped his every stratagem and tactic by simple presence. Like every autonomous unit the Empire employed it had a core of oricalcum, but unlike most others this was not a tiny sliver thinner than a silk strand, no this was a ball as large across as Chiuhn's own head — had he ever physically instantiated — engraved with a dense web of arcane circuitry and runes wrapping around its surface in interlocking bands. Never before had he laid eyes on one before and yet the glyphs burned brightly in his mind, their intricate geometries opening like a blooming flower beckoning a bee to nectar.

Chiuhn felt himself called, across the far horizon of the akashic sea towards a dark, warm, chamber where another heart beat in time with his own. He'd never had a heart before. Reaching out he touched that other palace and felt his mind split. 

A brief moment of bifurcated awareness; the psychic ocean stretching out around him and its waters bouying him up on waves of data, and at the same time he slipped into a second skin of metal and stone and anima which burned like the agony of birth. Then he was one again, laying atop a sea of information, aware of ten thousand little things… ten thousand and one.

*

*

Chiuhn was in darkness, cold and naked and alone. Utterly alone. In a way he had not been for a very long time. Even before the Ministry.

It was quite hard to be alone in a familial sanctum; with the sprawl of generation upon generation available to you with less than a thought. Of course there had been his mother and mother's private haven, where few but the family geniarchs would ever dare intrude uninvited, but Chiuhn could never recall being there alone past five months. 

Most of his life had been spent in close communion with… cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, colleagues, peers. His work was a constant stream of information flowing over and through him, demanding attention at every moment for days and weeks on end.

Of course, 'he' had been this alone many times. Whenever one of the lesser units assigned to his sector was deployed, something vaguely resembling Chiuhn's mind was there. It was the only way that the system could work. 

But he had never experienced it this fully; every copy of him that had ridden out of safety and into the dark, cold expanse had been stunted and lesser, reduced to an animal with barely more than animal instincts. Unnecessary parts trimmed away to ensure performance. Now he was embodying something not only capable of hosting the full faculties of his mind, but requiring them. 

Lesser units could wield anima brutishly through simplistic circuits that had only limited outputs. But a -state unit of any level could wield the full complexity of anima, weaving enchantments and flinging dozens of spells simultaneously across an entire battlefield. Quarter-state units could take on five or ten  _ Tiferet _ -class entities all on their own, more if properly supported by convention assets in the field. Half-state units could match greater threats, up to  _ Binah _ -class under certain conditions (and, of course, properly supported), while three-quarters-state units were held in reserve for either major offensives or the presence of  _ Chokhmah _ -class entities. 

There had never been a deployment of a full-state unit. Just as no  _ Keter _ -class entity had ever been sighted, except as a passing shadow across the skein of fate.

Flexing his thoughts, Chiuhn stretched out to fill the new physical body he inhabited. Half-state. Enough, maybe, if he weren't alone—

He wasn't alone, he realized. In those first first moments of awareness of his new body he had failed to notice the other presence, blinding by the vast and head storm of power that lay at his fingers, but now that he was settling into it Chiuhn felt the other mind nearby. All around him in fact. Of course.

Someone had to transport the unit, and someplace had to store it. Well, he was currently in that someplace, that 'someone'… so to speak.

It was odd, to reach out and find a medium more resistant than simple thought that required a concerted effort of will and actual intermediary steps. At least, intermediary steps not imposed by bureaucracy.

_ Hello? _

Remarkably little about his current vehicle was available to him, it was a dark splash across his awareness, an inky void past which he could not peer, a gray wash curtain enclosing him on all sides and muffling away the world. Chiuhn knew only that he currently — sat? Stood? Lay? — was in a chamber only just large enough for his own 6 meter bulk, held in place by some sort of dense gel all around him. And that he could practically feel the vast storm of anima churning beneath his metal-ceramic skin.

It burned like lightning in the carbon pseudo-coral of his inner flesh, arcing along oricalcum filaments laid throughout his body. Nodes of jewel, metal, and other strange states of matter clicked and chattered and hummed in a symphony of system checks. 

He could have recited them like a chant, listed off with technical precision the inventory of his current life, but he had no need. They were as instinctive to Chiuhn as the autonomic processes that evolution had once gifted his long dead ancestors. So, instead he waited, not with baited breath (he could not breath) but with intense anticipation.

Truthfully he didn't actually know if the unit even had a mind which could respond to him. Would such a sensitive role be entrusted to the unfailing obedience of lesser copies or handed over to the adaptive and lively intelligence of a fuller one? He really didn— 

_ ETA is 00:35 Agent Habash. Sensors are reporting heavy, but diminishing, combat at your LZ. _

He still couldn't tell what sort of mind it was. Its security protocols were too intense, too unyielding 

_ Can you provide a more detailed report of conditions on site? _

There was a brief pause and a long, deep, vibration that ran through the hull of the unit before it responded.

_ Anima backwash is heavy from Enemy combat operations. Estimated 70% of fast reaction force is mission killed. FIC19.35-310/700 still onsite, loitering at 300 meters. _

Better than— well, actually he didn't know if that was better than expected. There was a significant gap in his awareness, Chiuhn didn't know how much time had elapsed since he'd received the alert in the akashic sea as his greater self. 

_ Tap appears unbreached. Enemy incursion is… heavy. Too much interference for good reading, but at least company size. _

_ Time since first contact?  _

Another pause. 

_ 09:38 _

Not so bad as it could have been, but not nearly so good as he might have hoped for. Less than a third of his fact reaction force available, and more than ten minutes before any chance of reinforcements; leaving only the fast interception cruiser which had deployed the initial combat units to give Chiuhn some cover. But a FIC hardly carried heavy guns, only one of 19.35-310/700's was rated for over 100 meters. 

Heavy odds, and not in his favor. 

Chiuhn doubted his transport, whatever it was, would stick around with any intention of providing support fire. If it was even armed. 

He would need to play for time, delay direct confrontation until support was imminent. At the same time he would need to present sufficient threat to keep attention on him, to delay the breach of the tap and the Enemy's access to the plexus below it. Maneuver would be his focus. 

Spells slotted themselves in his mind. Illusions and wardings. Teleportation. Ones to speed up his reactions, to baffle and confuse the enemy, to avoid confrontation and turn away attacks. They rose up as one in his thoughts, like bubbles streaming upwards towards the surface.

Of course he would need attacks too, strong enough to dispatch lesser classes of the Enemy and to threaten the greater. More spells came to Chiuhn, bidden by his need. Devastating attacks designed to sear away flesh and shatter bone, or to whither life into— 

_ ETA is 00:13 _

Came the voice of the other unity, interrupting his thoughts at the same time as the gel around him began to harden, darkening into a gray-black shell of crystal surrounding him. Another vibration ran through the hull, and from below him some large and metallic released.

Slowly, as it continued to crystallize, the gel shrank, becoming like a second skin clinging to Chiuhn. 

The walls around him shrank in, pinching at the sides and collapsing inward at the top until he was sitting in an inverted star-shaped cone with the tip resting against his head. A spray of something filled up the remaining space between his gel shell and the edges of the cone with a thick sponge. He saw no more. But he felt his cell shift and flip end over end so that Chiuhn was facing head down.

_ ETA is 00:09... _

_ We are the seed, Agent Habash. _

His world shook and shuddered and like a curtain being pulled away the veil across his senses was ripped away. A chill wind bit, screaming, at his cage.

Falling through the open air, away from a cold, black sky, Chiuhn at last glimpsed his brief companion — a segmented worm, near as black as the void above, gliding through that same sky on diaphanous wings stretching like sails out to either side while dozens of dangling limbs pulled tight against its belly — before the angle of the world changed, shifted like a page in a book being turned, and it disappeared from every sense he possessed. Below him stretched a roiling layer of clouds, dark and heavy with ice. Their interiors lit by the occasional flash of lightning.

Whipping through the storm front he was briefly assaulted by hail the size of his own fists. His course never wavered.

Once past the layer of clouds he saw… Chiuhn had known the shape of the world, the Beast, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. To his right, past the distant outline of the ancient Wound — where the Small Men still huddled in their fastnesses and redoubts, clinging to the Beast's last dredges of warmth — and over the vast snowy fields of the nape he glimpsed the slope of the neck and the vast shapes of the horns upon the head, rising like spires to pierce the heavens, perpetually wreathed in a mantle of storm clouds so dark they were black. Lightning flashing through them. 

Left; more fields of frozen white, dotted here and there by the odd lake, trailing down into the broad plain of the tail. Run through with shifting, meandering rivers. Clung to by wandering bands of Yeti snatching food from their icy depths.

Before him the distant lip of the left-flank — imperceptibly flexing with the slow glacial movements of the Beast — and beyond it… the endless expanse of the dead World That Was, nothing but suggestion and impression past the World As Is. And behind him, between the feeble glow of the spinelights rising like crumbling mountains down the spine, another arctic expanse. 

Down and down he fell. 

Quickly the edges of the world shrank away, horizon bending up and away as his cell approached the ice below like a bolt from heaven. Even more than a solid meter of frozen water could not offer anything but the briefest instant of resistance against the missile that was Chiuhn. Still the impact bled much of his momentum. And yet on and on he fell through the chill waters.

Every moment bleeding yet more speed.

His descent went past 700 meters, 500, 400, 300. Distantly he caught sight of the flattened oblong of 19.35-310/700 before he was past it, falling to 250 meters. 200.

175.

160.

150.

Somewhere within his mind the countdown flashed 00:00 and as the shockwave collapse of his passage caught up to him Chiuhn's mind reached out, searching for the distant signals of the combat units below. Nine responded; four signalling only the most limited of capabilities, while the remaining five showed scattered damage, but otherwise remained functional. They were spread in a shallow arc less than seventy meters from his calculated landing site, facing off against a swarm of servitor creatures ( _ Hod _ -class).

120.

Chiuhn's cell continued the plunge downward. And within the foam drank in seawater and began, slowly, to unbind from itself in long trailing streamers.

100.

Part of the chemical reaction going on within the outer layer of his bindings generated heat, not much, but enough that there was enough energy on both sides of the crystallized gel layer surrounding his body to trigger another chemo-physical process. Bonds weakened and the atomic lattice of his shell deformed and cracked, shattering into tiny fragments. 

80.

He was now roughly half free.

The swirl of streamers dragging through the dense medium of the cold seawater had slowed his descent greatly. Chiuhn flexed his fingers and pinged the combat units below again; all still mostly intact, though now hard pressed. Retreating to his projected position.

50.

With his velocity down to 20 meters a second Chiuhn finally burst free of the last remnants of foam and hardened gel fragments. Gripping the inner surface of his cell at the ridges he threw his weight to one side, turning the whole thing end over end until his feet were pointed down to the sea floor. Where he needed to be. 

Immediately his descent slowed even more.

30.

That hardly mattered. It only took a thought for a small surge of anima to well up from his batteries, filling the buried nodes along his left arm all the way down into his hands and fingers. From there it took even less than that to…  _ turn _ and  _ twist _ , just so.

It was a feeling like nothing else he had ever felt. Real magic, real spells, were nothing like that playing in the sanctums, those were all data. Vast oricalcum lattices — buried deep within the Hub Cities of the Empire — holding the accumulated informational load of millions upon millions of humans. Changing meaning and fitting action to desire there was as simple as changing a few bits of data here and there. 

Want to be somewhere else? Change your coordinates and you were. Want to fly? Your sanctum could allow it, gravity no more real than the color of the sky or the sensation of wind. 

But this… the strange way that space twisted around and through him as he completed the components of the spell, a lurching sort of sensation, that was a real feeling. Undeniable. Unforgettable. 

Unimportant.

Landing in the silt amongst the five remaining combat units (hulking 2.5 meter constructs, some standing on two legs and some on six and all looking as if pulled from either some bad child's play scenario or nightmare 'scape) Chiuhn took in the situation with his own senses at last. Five combat units splayed out in a shallow arc facing head-left-flank against four and a half times their number in a mixture of  _ Hod _ \- and  _ Yesod _ -class entities. Himself, in the curve of that arc, facing the enemy.

First, preserve assets. Accumulated damage from the long minutes of running combat — a partial list of; one mangled limb, countless rents and tears, three shattered sensor clusters, a shoulder joint melted to slag, and cracked armor — had reduced the combat effectiveness of his units down to an average of 76%. Not good enough.

Chiuhn would need them operating at peak to further distract and divide the Enemy's efforts. 

More anima flowed through him, out of him… arcing like forked lightning across intervening space, a tine for each of the units. Filling them. It took but a simple twist of his will and armor mended itself, lenses sealed and righted, crushed limbs restored themselves, and fused joints cracked open as if new. Ammo stores refilled. Batteries were recharged. It was as if the clock of the world had been turned back on all five of the units, and not just turned back.

Their minds ran fast and hungry. Sleek saw toothed predators lurked where plodding soldiery had resided before.

As his spells settled into place the crowd of pursuers stalled and hesitated, their dim minds struggling to comprehend his actions and the threat he posed, but it was already too late. They were dead whether they knew it or not.

Five flechette guns opened fire as one, disgorging bursts of serrate missiles which ripped through flesh and blubbed and cracked open bone. Several of the Enemy died instantly, little (less than .5 meters in length) eel-like tubes of muscle and teeth, turned into ribbons of skin and muscle and a cloud of blue-purple blood. More fire tore one of the larger entities (1 meter, bone plated along its face and gut, shaped like a spear-headed fish-squid) in half.

That was when Chiuhn reached out, drawing up more anima— no, gathering  _ his _ anima into a lance of pure energy which seared six entities out of existence and boiled the seawater with its passage. 

Only a handful remained.

In a moment, none did. Torn apart by a few last volleys from his combat units as they attempted to scatter in all directions, their blood and viscera drifted slowly down to settle in the silt. Already thought he could feel the (pressure? intent?)... presence of the Enemy moving to meet them.

Like a shadow or an echo of anima, a pre-image of what wasn't yet, they shifted and moved about at the limits of his perception. Uncertain possibilities manifesting as ghostly suggestions of bodies and minds in his sight.

With a silent command he called all five of the units back to him, beckoning them in closer still until they were pressed right up to him, and then Chiuhn wove another spell around all six of them; one of light and shadow and the murky depths of fickle memory, of tricks of starlight and strange shapes shifting in the depths of a storm, of cold lightless nights and the white fur against the snow. The spell wrapped itself around each of them, a cloak of midnight, to hide them away. Not completely, but well enough that it would take one of the major classes to peer past.

Another spell, this one to quick step and speed the way.

Yet another to hide the signs of their passing.

Then one more to send illusory copies grinding away into the dark of the ocean. 

Such petty effects would not fool the Enemy for long. But it ought to sow enough confusion amongst the Enemy's lesser ranks to gain Chiuhn and his small band of combat units space to maneuver.

Breaking right, avoiding the path of one approaching group, he aimed for a small rise in the seafloor; looping around the back of it and slipping in behind the force they'd just avoided. There were fifteen in the group — thick bodied crustaceans supported by profusions of long spindly legs, standing a meter and a half high — skittering along the seafloor in a stop and start dance, their twitchy little eyes scanning all around them. Not that it helped. Their simple vision could only barely perceive the useful wavelengths of light, nevermind anima too actually have a hope of detecting Chiuhn and his force.

It took concentrated fire to break through their carapace thought. Against unsupported combat units they might have proven a threat.

Faced by ones restored and enhanced by spell they were nothing. Dozens of flechettes bit into chitin, their razor edges sparking caustic green at each point of contact and biting deep to reach the soft flesh beneath. And then Chiuhn was in amidst them, appearing out of nothingness to tear the hearts out of the nearest two.

His foot shattered a nearby leg at the joint.

Anima welled in his off hand into a whip of pure force that shattered the shells of three more and sent them tumbling into the silt. Two chitinous spars rebounded off his back, tumbling wildly away, as the remaining crabs descended upon him with single minded focus.

Even as… one, two, three, four more fell to the combined fire of his five combat units they came on, long limbs carrying them quickly over the intervening distance to pounce on him. Tiny little needle teeth worried at his metallic skin, loosing gobs of digestive acids, as the fumbling digits of their legs and arms pulled desperately at his body. Withering fire rained down on them as Chiuhn spun about tore off more of their bodies.

In moments only one remained, limping by on three nearly shattered legs. He crushed its head with a single swipe of his hand.

Then it was back into the embrace of shrouding spells and dark sea.

Back along the path of the patrol they went, pressing ever closer in towards the center of the growing infection. Another meeting, this time with more of the eel-things, supported by small squids with shocking tentacles.

Yet more of the Enemy dead.

Again back into spell and shadow, then a short hop and skip — squeezed through the pinhole of the universe and stretched across its skein like a drumhead — clear across to the opposite side; emerging in the center of a long column of slug things guarded by roving bands of more crabs. Cut, jab, crush. Kill and kill. Spin a whirlpool of death, lightning tongued and burning like a beacon.

Split, Chiuhn one way and the combat units another.

Pick off isolated targets (moving, always moving, circling the quarry). Regroup again — pouring out his anima to bend the world, until there was here and there and no in between — and start working again closer to the tap where the Enemy still hoarded its strength for the fight it knew was coming. It was a dance, long and complicated. Drawn out on a scale of seconds stretching into minutes and kilometers as he contended with the Enemy in all its virulent glory and animal brilliance. 

He out fought the Enemy, out thought it. Out maneuvered it. Death and death and death he dealt.

And it was not enough. Would never be. 

For the Enemy could not simply be bested upon the field of battle, it had to be met in its places of power and safety, to be met on fields which it could not retreat from, could not simply shuck off meat and blood and corpus to escape fate. Such was its mastery over all the myriad forms of life. It had given up all outward signs of thought; the Enemy wore no clothing or armor and bore no weapon or tool which it did not itself grow, having discarded them quickly in its mad scramble to save itself.

What pieces of itself it offered up as ablative armor and sacrifice were of little consequences, simple bits of living mattered twisted to its purpose. 

Chiuhn needed to excise the threat at its source. Kill the part of the Enemy which had installed itself upon the tap before it could become a true threat — glut itself on anima — to the Empire and metastasize. 

He led his small force between two patrols, so dense with flesh this close to the tap each was almost a solid wall, following between a pair of rises (rimmed by a kaleidoscopic glow) in the seafloor and stepped out into the vast flat plain surrounding the tap. It was much transformed. What before had been a barren expanse home only to scavengers and darkness was become a sprawling tumorous garden of monstrous flesh; tall swaying tubers, pink fronts sweeping the water clear, and vast blooms of pulsating blue fleshy-bulbs, strung together on a winding network of deep purple veins, and blue-yellow mounds of gummy meat which pulsed like vast lungs. Little skittering beetle-crabs dashed between each, mandibles picking gently at the exposed flesh. Above wandered enormous sacks of skin and water and air, trailing long ropey tentacles across the sea floor and occasionally stopping to either pull something up into their bodies or disgorge something to the ground below.

Further in the growths grew thicker and more things moved, large roving masses of legs and mouths resembling something like a sea star or urchin that swept the ground, sucking up the accumulated silt off the seafloor. There was a noticeable difference in elevation already. Within that dense agglomeration the Enemy sat, waiting, atop the tap. He could see naught but faint glow of anima, but still Chiuhn knew it was there.

With a thought his five combat units — slightly tarnished now, but still very much intact — split into groups of three and two and wandered off a ways before opening fire on the nearest growth. Ichor and blood stained the sea as flechettes tore through flesh and skin. A few moments was all it took for the units to carve a bloody ruin in the surrounding growth, bursting buds and mounds and toppling tubers and crushing thick knots of veins. Cries rose up from deeper within the colony, high warbling shrieks of pain and animal rage.

Stretching out his senses, Chiuhn felt the Enemy's forces shifting their attention like a tide washing over him, and their many simple minds frantically rousing themselves to action.

Fifteen. Thirty-four. Four-nine. Sixty. Ninety-one.

Too many to count consciously, a distant part of his mind (and yet not) kept dutiful track with inhuman precision. Streaming out of boney warrens and slithering out of pulsating nests they came on; eel-things and squid-things and crabs and darting knife fish and long pale worms. 

Many were their forms. 

And from out beyond the core of the colony he felt others turn to bear down upon them. Hundreds. Thousands.

Barely a concern. Only a bare handful were anything more than  _ Netzach _ -class — several handfuls of  _ Tiferet _ , some small number of  _ Gevurah _ , and two  _ Chesed _ — little more than speedbumps to his own might. Not unless his quarry roused itself. 

T-01:41.

He would have to be careful. Chiuhn could not abandon his combat units fully, but nor could he embed himself with them. Things would need to be time precisely so that he could strike deep within the colony at the right moment, using the combat units to distract and divert as he prepared for his own full bore offensive.

The first wave approached, a mix of eels and knife-fish and crabs.

Volleys of flechettes reduce most in the front ranks into scattered scraps of meat. On the tide came though, through the cloud of viscera and blood, neither flinching or hesitating in the face of a withering stream of fire.

Prongs from the main bulk were already separating out to flank and encircle. At a chokepoint the combat units fire could reduce even vastly superior numbers to nothing, but, divided their fire would count for less. Weaving another spell, Chiuhn empowered the units yet further.

Lightning arced from their weapons. Chaining into the surrounding mass of flesh, cooking the Enemy.

Heat surrounded each, like a halo, boiling water to steam in seconds. As the first flanking forces made contact their eyes burst and brains baked inside their skulls, skin sloughing off as muscle and ligament denatured right off the bones beneath. More came in behind them though, heedless of any danger, and lived for a few moments as the heat rose again around each unit. 

Their teeth and claws and razor fins found little purchase against renewed metallic skin.

At first.

Weight of numbers and simple time would see them finding some seam or pushing the materials to their stress limits.

More of his anima flowed out. This time he conjured ice from the surrounding sea water in a pair of great domes, half a meter thick in every direction and spanning over eight meters in diameter, which he stretched over each group, leaving only thin doorways through which they continued to shoot.

T-1:27

On and on the Enemy came, throwing itself at the domes and their openings.

Dozens died every second. More simply kept coming. 

Spells and spells he wove into the combat units seeking to hone them, however briefly, into a perfect machine of violence. He gave them blades which sang ancient songs of death riding in on howling gales and spun loose the bonds of mundane physics on their bodies. Their eyes he made into petrifying gimlets. And all around their bastions he rose forests of icey pillars decorated with runes of pain and terror.

It was slow work, seconds ticking by as hours, carefully constrained never to present an impossible defense.

T-01:02

Chiuhn meanwhile slipped quietly between shivering tubers and groaning tumors. Inward, ever inward. Shrouded in shadow and a twist of empty-space he bypassed rushing reinforcements and wary defences, his steps as light as snowflake, as he pressed deeper and deeper into the heart of the Enemy's power. 

From far above a steel rain began to fall, rounds as thick around as his own hand shattering ice and flesh and bone as they detonated in a staccato beat; the heat and percussive wave of each interlocking in a complex pattern killed just as surely as the blasts themselves. Suddenly roaring back to life FIC19.35-310/700's engines filled the area with a booming bellow and a dozen spotlights fit to blind the near-blind creatures of the deep sea. Of course the Enemy did not countenance such deficiencies in its servitors, still the abrupt shift was enough to disorient.

Just eighty meters up the cruiser was well within range of both  _ Chesed  _ and  _ Gevurah _ -class entities. Vulnerable.

He could fix that. Another set of spells, reinforcing the ship's hull and cladding it in a shimmer of prismatic light as well as turning two of its nine smaller guns into lightning lances with which to sear the Enemy from the world.

Finally, finally, the last of the lesser entities committed themselves.

Out of the swarm of creatures came seventeen entities; their forms varied. First the  _ Tiferet _ , long sinuous many-limbed creatures appearing like a cross between worms and squids and eels, their flesh a purple so deep and dark it seemed almost black. Nine of them flashed out into the open waters, racing upwards towards his cruiser. 

FIC19.35-310/700 fired furiously at them, tearing loose tentacles and ripping open sides. They swam on.

Next out came the  _ Gevurah _ . They were five, thick bodied and red all over, glowing with heat and covered in thick plates of chitin with turned away flechette and lightning equally. Like moving boulders raised up on tree trunk stilts. Each had six legs, three heads, and four arms.

From one of their arms they launched massive chitinous spikes which speared into the icey armor surrounding his units and released clouds of acid.

T-00:49

After that came at last the  _ Chesed _ , graceful cetacean shaped monsters spotted with white whose eyes burned away lesser things and whose mouths, when opened, shattered stone. Their bony faces could deflect direct fire from anything below the main gun of a second-line cruiser, and their fins could cleave steel. 

One went to join the nine  _ Tiferet _ , while the other two circled his combat units and burned away their protection.

Perfect.

Chiuhn flung a last handful of spells back, cladding each of the combat units in their own prismatic shield, then he unmade their flechette guns to fling lances of unmaking, too he unshackled their minds, and fed each a small reserve of anima. 9.35-310/700 he wreathed in a storm of screaming skulls which tore at the soul and froze the body, loosed its quickling mind, transformed its close-defenses into scythes bound with deathly energies, and at last lent it another (larger) part of his anima.

Dropping his shroud he twisted space around himself, bending here and there into oneness, and stepped across.

He appeared amidst the wreckage of the units 105c, 764c, and 811e. Not 415b. They were overgrown by the veins of the enemy, mounds of metal and circuit scattered to the seafloor and rendered inert. He could not remember being any of them save 415b, their plodding lives and simple thoughts lost.

Mourning was useless, they had never lived and thus had never died. He had been and was still, them. 

Beside him stood a tall bud of flesh pulsing, like a heart or a lung, deep blue, which he withered into a dry, crumbling husk with just a touch. 

Ahead of perched atop the tap, black metal shell exterior torn open like wrapping paper to reveal the complex geometries of its interior, lay the Enemy; twenty meters tall from tip to stem, a third of that acros, and twenty-one tentacles — each one thirty meters long — coiled tightly in and through the wreckage of the tap. Two of its seven eyes swiveled to fix him in place, and three of its mouths opened to let loose a dirge call for the world which reverberated through the anima. 

Distorting it into a nightmarish tangle.

That would hardly do.

Chiuhn writ it calm again, smoothing out the sudden explosion of fractal edges — universal constants flattened out into cleaving planes — and blooms of jagged spikes — the three-physical dimensions collapsing and expanding unevenly — and enclosing them both in a pocket of enclosed space-time. All else faded away save him and the Enemy.

Levering itself out of its nest, the Enemy charged at him. Its long tentacles eating up the meters between them in seconds as sickle claws flashed in the dark like the glimmering stars. 

Weaving a cloak of shadow and quickness around himself, Chiuhn bent and raced through the forest of blades.

Time. He needed to buy time. Just over eight minutes of it for his reinforcements to arrive.

Pirouetting in place he dodged the glinting edge of one claw and found himself looking down the point of another, forcing him to unfold three panes of light in its way to buy him enough time to maneuver to deflect it. Another dab of his anima gone. He was down to 43% of his reserves between buffing the combat units and cruiser, offensive spells, and rapid teleportation. Well worth it, estimating based on Enemy force composition (minus the  _ Binah _ -class entity he now faced) his forces should suffer no more than 60% casualties in those eight minutes.

The Enemy would fare a little better, and likely suffer only 52% casualties, but the reinforcements would be facing a much reduced element and be able to wipe it away in short order.

So long as he was not killed in the meantime and his remaining anima reserves were above 13% the disparity at the point should be enough to see off a single  _ Binah _ -class. 

Dodging another pair of sickle-ended tentacles he teleported away, appearing on the opposite side of the tap and immediately scattering a number of binding runes across the seafloor around him. Chiuhn then clad each of his arms in angled planes of hot starlight.

Over the rise of the tap appeared the Enemy again, it's black eyes scanning over and then pinning him in place with an intricate cage of anima. He froze the seawater before him into a solid slab of ice and struck in, folding away the blade, sending a hail of icey slivers careening towards the Enemy. Too small to pierce through its thick hide, he aimed them for its eyes and mouths.

Several of its arms came up, battering aside the cloud of ice needles.

He would have grinned if his body were capable of it. 

As the Enemy barreled on it was forced to use its many limbs to arrest it's motion, and when they came down two of them came down directly on his runes and chains of lightning lashed them in place. Three more caught the edges of some.

Those remained free, though with chunks of skin and muscles torn out.

Tumbling widely for a moment the Enemy let loose a deep, pained, cry which hammed at his shield of ice. Cracks exploded across its surface, but did not shatter. At last he unwove the anima prison.

38%

Darting out from behind the shield Chiuhn leapt over the wild flail of a tentacle and flung himself on a jet of water at one of the trapped limbs. Below him the Enemy, just regaining control over its course as it's tentacles bit into the seafloor, slammed into his shield and shattered it. It's eyes swept over him, attempting again to entrap him, but he ate the spell and spat it back out again in an envelope of corroding poison.

As he passed his lightning cage reached out and pulled Chiuhn in.

He slammed into the tentacle, burying one of his starlight blades in the rubbery flesh. Beneath skin and muscle he felt bone crack and shatter.

The Enemy screamed and he felt a wave of fear wash over him, trying to sink hooks into his mind like a thousand wriggling worms, Chiuhn shrugged it off and ripped his bladed arm out in a swoop upward arc that cut through almost half the tentacle. Another scream and he felt his limbs locking up. Not with terror or fear, but with the leaden slow of long ages and death.

No. 

He flooded his body with anima, burning out the spell and turning back the clock of time. There was a pop as the Enemy finally unwove his binding spells and Chiuhn dropped instantly to the underside of the tentacle to avoid a trio of arms, but before her could slice through the remaining flesh and sinew and bone he had wrapped himself in cocoon of anima as another pair of tentacles swiped him away.

To stop his wild tumble he unfolded his cocoon. Then he splintered it into more than a dozen sheets and arrayed them about himself in constantly shifting orbits. 

34%

He was burning through his reserves more quickly than he'd hoped. Unbidden the thought came to him; magical duels always began in bursts as each side tested the other and sought frantically for advantages, but they generally settled until the climactic few moments. Or one side scrambled desperately, spending itself into death.

Another scream. Though this time it reverberated not with malign intent, but simply with a spark of… connection.

Chiuhn tried to throw it off, to deflect it with a surge of anima. But it was too simplistic for that. This was not some psychic hack attempting to worm its way into his mind, no, it was nothing more than the reflective desire to communicate. To connect. Wrapped in anima. A spell so base, so crude and primordial that it imprinted itself on the thin remnants of animal intellect which even the empire could not excise.

There was no denying such magic.

_ MONSTER. PLUNDERED. DEVOURER. _

It's voice was multi-tonal and -faceted, like the boom of thunder and roar of wind and the churning thrum of engine all at once. Childlike and ancient in the same breath. Thought. 

More arms sped towards him as the Enemy thrust itself back into the open water.

He spun his shield into place, intercepting claws and deflecting them. Slashing at flesh as it rushed past, spilling blood in clouds and rivers.

_ BUTCHER. MURDERER. DEFILER. _

One of his shields shattered, its slivers dissolving into the background anima in seconds as caught one sickle claw with his blade and sent it careen back down towards the seafloor. Another tentacle he kicked away. Two more of his shields broke and disintegrated.

Chiuhn wove more binding runes around him in a thin shell.

31%

_ SCHISMATIC. FOOL. _

He cleaved through one tentacle at the joint near the clawed end, filling the water with the stink of the Enemy. Another slipped through his shields, sparking off the prismatic second skin. Pulling his shield in close he bit down on the arm, pulping flesh and cracking the bone underneath as it was yanked back away. 

More of his shields splintered as a rain of blows fell upon them. With a crackle and a pop one of his binding runes activated, trapping the claw in place.

Three more of his screens were destroyed. Another tentacle slipped past the remaining ones and cracked his second skin in a cascade of invisible fire which caught in the flesh and began to devour it in a slow wave. Before much of it had blacked into char and ash a second arm lashed out, its hooked talon slicing through the second joint up in a single vicious swipe.

Four down, seventeen to go. 

Now was the time to press, Chiuhn decided, launching himself forward on a jet of water and pure force. Spinning his shields into a while around him he careened towards the Enemy's head.

Arms lashed out, shattering more of his screens and arcing off his blades. Two tentacles, three, four, came up in his path and Chiuhn drove on, sinking the starlight edges of his weapons through skin and deep into the muscle beneath. Behind him another two tentacles swipe aside more of his screening shields, one sweeping along his back scoring a deep gouge in his metal flesh and biting deep enough that Chiuhn felt sea water seep in. 

Pressure oscillated wildly all around him, spike and crashing in seconds, causing a series of supercavitation events that battered aside tentacles, tearing flesh from bone as it cracked and splintered. 

Micro-fractures were spread across Chiuhn's skin, like a fine spider web. With a surge of anima he sealed and normalized them.

23%

Bloody wisps and splinters of bone large as his hand and ragged strips of leaking skin and muscle drifted through the water. Three more tentacles ended in stumps. A quintet of black eyes gazed back at him, the Enemy drifting away in the pitch black of their private reality.

_ WILL. AND. FLESH. PREVAILS. _

It's flesh rippled. Squirming, like a maggot filled carcass. Then it bloomed, the old splitting to reveal new skin — pink and shiny, rapidly darkening — and bone beneath that grew in fast forward. What had been fourteen, became fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one again.

A sound like laughter filled Chiuhn's head.

_ YOUR. APOTHEOSIS. FAILS. BEAST. LIVES. _

Surging forward in a storm of striking and whipping arms the Enemy charged him and Chiuhn darted backward, raising new shields from his depleting reserves of anima. He parried and deflected, bending away blows which would have pierced armor. But he could not be everywhere, could not defend perfectly.

Quickly, oh so quickly, his screens failed. He missed a block there and his side earned a long trailing scratch.

_ RELENT.  _

On and on it went, an endless exchange of blow and counter and parry, carving a tracery of superficial damage into his body. Partial state units were not meant for direct combat, their strength lay in spell and support, twisting the battlefield and raising up other combat units to greater and greater heights. But he fought on.

What other choice was there.

Wrapping himself in a twist of space-time, Chiuhn teleported away again (not far, he didn't have the anima left in reserve to justify it), just enough to regain his footing. Chasing after him, the Enemy came head first. He summoned and flung a hail of icey needles its way.

19%

_ SURRENDER. _

Yet more of his screens shattered into nothingness, one of his starlight blades cut deep into the nearest tentacle; from cuticle down to the bone and a quarter of the way to the nearest joint. Another he blocked as it swung down overhead, driving him down. Sparks and shards of anima filled the air.

Dissolving back into the background of the world. 

Charging away he sought open space, but the Enemy pursued doggedly matching his speed at every turn and thrust. All he had to fend of further attacks and blows, tentacles whipping in out of the dark to slash across his path or angle in from the side, harassing and harrying him. Chiuhn cut and dodged and danced around the perimeter of the enclosed pocket of space.

Finally an arm caught him in the side, his needle sharp tip puncturing his side and dragged around as the Enemy brought him close. 

He burned more of his anima, setting loose a coruscating ball of plasma and lightning in his path, in seconds it had burned off the tentacle skewering him and forced the Enemy to momentarily flee. Diving he sought the seafloor. 

15%

But the Enemy was quick on his trail, five tentacles wrapped around his limbs and chest, barreling him down into the seafloor without a burst of silt. Fifteen other limbs slammed down into the ground around him and overhead the bul;k of the Enemy's body loomed, mouths agape and three of its pitiless eyes — each large as his own head and burning with animal fury — fixed on him.

_ DIE. _

He did not hear it or see it, but Chiuhn felt it happen. The bubble of space he had trapped them in, popping. Like a pane of glass breaking, or a sheet tearing. 

A sudden release and the rush of… otherness, elsewhere, pouring in all at once.

For the first time, her thought back at the Enemy. Such a simplistic, base, connection could not be only one way that was the purview of more complicated spells. He thought only one word, a single, unsparing thought which resounded within his own mind like a memory and wish.

_ No. _

Through the rapidly expanding tear in his bubble something small and dark darted, faster than thought and sound. It struck the seafloor and burst open, waves buffeted them both dislodging a few tentacles but otherwise leaving them unharmed.

Chiuhn wrapped himself in the crudest, most brute force twist of space and tore himself away. Along came the ends of all five tentacles which had held him. 

13%

He appeared in front of three cruisers, two new ones and — sporting seven deep gouts along its flanks, its armor worn to nothing all over its body, and with 31% of its armament gone, but still functioning — FIC19.35-310/700, who as one fired their main guns.

With muffled cracks they struck home, gouging out flesh and shattering bone.

All over the sea bed the shattered remains of the colony lay in ragged ruins flesh and the faint tinge of blood and just over eighty combat units swept through it, converging on the tap. Nine minutes he had lived.

Long enough not only for his reinforcements to arrive, but for them to dispatch the rest of the colony. Mostly. Some few survivors were still hiding out within the wreckage, but they would soon be taken care of. 

Rising the Enemy's flesh renewed itself again. 

Even so, as with the rest of the colony, it's death was a foregone conclusion. Chiuhn wove anima into the main guns of all three cruisers and what came out when they all fired again was not simply a metal shell around explosives, but one glowing the last light in the eyes of the dead at their passing. And when they struck true, flesh blackened and ate at itself.

It would not be quick, nor painless. But it was done. All that was left was the slow slog towards death. 

He would have grinned if he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, and all that welcome! Either here or on tumblr (name's the same).


End file.
